Any regular person sees space flight as the stuff of dreams impossible to fulfill. For NASA astronauts, it’s all part of their job, even though they sacrifice many Earthly comforts to get there. But despite being so far from home, astronauts are still connected to their family and friends thanks to modern technology. They can even take part in events and do their social duty, such as voting. But how does this process work in space?
History of Voting in Space
For many American citizens, especially those abroad, including troops stationed on foreign bases, the long-distance voting process by way of posting ballots has long been the norm. But in space, this approach would pose certain challenges, for obvious reasons. Nobody in their right mind will attempt to schedule a spacecraft, only to get it back to Earth with a couple of paper ballots.
In any case, this wasn’t that big of a problem until the mid 90s. The first American station, Skylab, received its crew between 1973 and early 1974, when there were no nationwide elections. Shuttle flights took only a few weeks to complete, allowing astronauts to vote early.
Everything changed when American astronauts began working first on the Mir station, and then the ISS. By that stage, space missions had stretched to lengthy affairs, spanning months at a time. This posed a challenge to early voting, as astronauts often left Earth before the dates in question.
The first to suggest a solution to this was astronaut John Blaha. In 1996, he proposed to give his presidential vote digitally. NASA approved this idea, but faced some difficulties from the legal side. Blaha, like many American astronauts, was registered to vote in Texas, and the e-voting scheme had yet to become legal in that state. So on that occasion, Blaha never managed to cast his vote for the right candidate.
But his initiative wasn’t in vain. The following year, in 1997, Texas approved the law that allowed astronauts to use e-voting when they are in space. The first to try out the new rule was David Wolf. In 1997, he voted in local Houston elections while on the Mir station.
How Astronauts Vote in Space
Starting in 2004, American astronauts working on the ISS have been able to vote in presidential elections, except for 2012 when they managed to vote early. Kathleen Rubins even voted twice, in 2020 and 2024. But what does this process look like?
Astronauts, like other Americans that find themselves out of the country during the election, vote by filing a Federal Post Card Application that would allow them to vote remotely. This is how astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams voted when they had to extend their stay on the ISS due to unplanned issues with the Starliner spacecraft.
During the elections, the JSC sends an encrypted e-ballot to the ISS, and astronauts receive an email with voting permission from the civil clerk of their district. To protect voting anonymity, ballots are encrypted to only be available to the astronaut and clerk in question.
Once the astronaut fills the ballot, the document is sent back to Earth via TDRS, the tracking and data relay satellite. First it’s transmitted to the ground antenna in the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, then travels to the NASA flight control center in Johnson, and after that, to the district clerk. The document is then printed out and counted along with other ballots.
In conclusion, it’s also worth mentioning that some ESA astronauts also voted while on the ISS. But since not all countries allow e-voting, they had to use other methods. For instance, Thomas Pesquet voted in 2017 French presidential elections with a notarized permission to do so. The astronaut had asked his colleague to vote in his name, and the act was made official.
